I wrote about Fearon (1995)’s puzzle: reasonable countries, under most realistic circumstances, always have better options than to go to war. Yet wars still happen. Why?
I discuss 4 different explanations, including 2 of Fearon’s (private information with incentives to mislead, commitment problems) and 2 others (irrational decisionmakers, and decisionmakers that are game-theoretically rational but have unreasonable and/or destructive preferences)
https://linch.substack.com/p/the-puzzle-of-war
I wrote about Fearon (1995)’s puzzle: reasonable countries, under most realistic circumstances, always have better options than to go to war. Yet wars still happen. Why?
I discuss 4 different explanations, including 2 of Fearon’s (private information with incentives to mislead, commitment problems) and 2 others (irrational decisionmakers, and decisionmakers that are game-theoretically rational but have unreasonable and/or destructive preferences)